Q: Could have the US accepted an exchange of population with Nazi Germany in order to avoid a possible genocide during WWII?

[Mario]

Let's assume that Nazi Germany would have had the crazy idea to offer the United States the possibility of exchanging population, in the way that the US would receive the Jews, Roma, Slavs etc. etc. the Nazis did not want in their own and conquered territories like if they were new immigrants to be resettled in America, while the US in its side would strip the citizenship of lots of German/Austrian immigrants or other citizens of German origin using the excuse of a potential 'treason' to America, forcing them to 'return' to Germany (thus the loss of population in the Nazi German territories would be more or less compensated).

Of course the idea might be unacceptable at first for the US government, but the pressure of leaving those millions of people in Europe under the high risk of becoming victims of a potential genocide or other atrocities when they could have the chance of saving all of them without having to send American soldiers to die there...would not be that easy to reject at the end. Of course the Nazis would guarantee the Americans that all the German-American people returned to Europe would be well treated (as they were interested in keeping them as a productive workforce and provide them jobs, farms etc.).

 

[bsmart]

So the U.S. forces people of Germanic heritage to go to Germany? Don't think that will sell. Now if you were willing to take orientals . . .

 

[Grimbald]

No.
A thousand times no.
The US might be persuaded to take more of Hitlers "undesirables " but a trade, no.

 

[nbcman]

Aside from the unconstitutionality of stripping citizenship without cause or due process, there’s no way that would happen from a cynical perspective. There would be millions of voters opposed to this policy and FDR would be sure to lose every Midwest state, Pennsylvania, and other states with significant German-American populations.

 

[New Cleo Genesis]

In a world where the American Indian population didn't receive the right to vote in 1924 I could maybe see the U.S. sending some of them off to Germany, since Hitler believed them to be honorary Aryans.

 

[Alternator]

Even beyond the idea of committing I don't even know how many crimes by shipping Americans over to Nazi Germany, this POD would require the Holocaust to be known to the general public.

Jews, Slavs, etc. being treated poorly was known, but nothing unusual. Genocide was not known, and would have massively changed public opinion.

 

[Thomas Jefferson]

Given OTL's record with regard to Jewish refugees, I don't think it's plausible.

 

[TIMER]

The only way that the US would even think of accepting any population exchange is if germany would provide skilled, protestant, working age, educated immigrants in exchange for colored people and prison inmates.

 

[Lusitania]

Ok we talking about the US that had closed its borders to Jews and most Europeans since the late 1920s right? They had chance to save thousands of Jews both before and during war and did nothing.

 

[wingren013]

The Nazi worldview was such that deporting people was never an option. The Nazis saw the Jews and Slavs as enemies of the 'Aryan' people. As long as there were Jews and Slavs in the world, they would always be in danger.

 

[Captain Homicide]

Nazi Germany controlled 80+ million Slavs in Poland and the USSR during WW2.

It’s ASB to think the US would (or could) take that many people.

 

[Mario]

Aside from the unconstitutionality of stripping citizenship without cause or due process, there’s no way that would happen from a cynical perspective. There would be millions of voters opposed to this policy and FDR would be sure to lose every Midwest state, Pennsylvania, and other states with significant German-American populations.

Well, this is depending on how you could sell that.

Obviously I was not talking about ALL German-American population (who were already millions of people by mid-20th century), but they could build a general case against some part of them alleging suspicion of Nazi sympathy or something like it was done IOTL with those suspect of collaboration with the USSR.

Maybe even the poorest might 'volunteer' if they are offered a farm in Europe, we can't rule out such possibilities.

Even beyond the idea of committing I don't even know how many crimes by shipping Americans over to Nazi Germany, this POD would require the Holocaust to be known to the general public.

Jews, Slavs, etc. being treated poorly was known, but nothing unusual. Genocide was not known, and would have massively changed public opinion.

If Nazi Germany would offer such deal to the US they would make obvious that the alternate scenario would be very vey bad for this population. After Kristallnacht and other pogroms the US should believe they can do such atrocities.

Ok we talking about the US that had closed its borders to Jews and most Europeans since the late 1920s right? They had chance to save thousands of Jews both before and during war and did nothing.

The US government pretended to do not believe that Jews were in such danger, but making this deal public would put a lot of pressure on this topic. Nazis could argue that 'you could save them but you prefered us to destroy them'.

The Nazi worldview was such that deporting people was never an option. The Nazis saw the Jews and Slavs as enemies of the 'Aryan' people. As long as there were Jews and Slavs in the world, they would always be in danger.

It is absolutely stupid to think that they could do anything against i.e. the Jewish Americans, who were completely out of their reach.

Nazi Germany controlled 80+ million Slavs in Poland and the USSR during WW2.

It’s ASB to think the US would (or could) take that many people.

Well, this deal would probably come before the German invasion of the USSR. Probably the US would not take such big amount of Polish population, but a significant part, specially those less eager to be 'Germanized'.

 

[NoMommsen]

No.
A thousand times no.
The US might be persuaded to take more of Hitlers "undesirables " ...

How ?

 

[Belisarius II]

Let's assume that Nazi Germany would have had the crazy idea to offer the United States the possibility of exchanging population, in the way that the US would receive the Jews, Roma, Slavs etc. etc. the Nazis did not want in their own and conquered territories like if they were new immigrants to be resettled in America, while the US in its side would strip the citizenship of lots of German/Austrian immigrants or other citizens of German origin using the excuse of a potential 'treason' to America, forcing them to 'return' to Germany (thus the loss of population in the Nazi German territories would be more or less compensated).

Of course the idea might be unacceptable at first for the US government, but the pressure of leaving those millions of people in Europe under the high risk of becoming victims of a potential genocide or other atrocities when they could have the chance of saving all of them without having to send American soldiers to die there...would not be that easy to reject at the end. Of course the Nazis would guarantee the Americans that all the German-American people returned to Europe would be well treated (as they were interested in keeping them as a productive workforce and provide them jobs, farms etc.).

Mario the basic premises of you question are based on false assumptions. From the American point of view the idea is a Constitutional, and legal impossibility, as well as being morally offensive. The Immigration & Naturalization Act of 1924 limited immigration in general, and from Eastern, and Southern Europe in particular. A quota was set for each country based on the ethnic composition of the United States according to the 1890 Census. There was little support in the country to open the quotas, and FDR wasn't interested in spending political capital to help refugees, but that's between him, and God.

By the time the Nazis were controlling millions of Jews, and other hated groups the war had already started, and deporting them from Europe wasn't possible. That's why the Nazis determined on the Holocausts, because they couldn't get rid of them any other way. The Jews of Russia were to be murdered in place, by extermination units, rather then being shipped to death camps. There were covert efforts to negotiate with the Nazis to spare groups of Jews, but the Nazi price was large numbers of trucks, that the Americans thought would be too helpful to the German War Effort. Money was given to some other covert efforts, such as the Wallenberg mission, but the main effort to help the victims of the Holocaust was thought to be, to win the war as quickly as possible.

The idea that American Soldiers were being sent to Europe to stop the Holocaust is completely false. FDR wanted to make it clear that wasn't the reason American was fighting. As far as the Administration went was limited covert action, and letting the Nazis know they'd be tried for the crimes they committed. It's shocking to read some of the comments he made to Churchill during the war about German Antisemitism. He thought the Jews couldn't be allowed to have as much influence over the German Economy, as they had before the Nazis took power. That German anti-Semitism was a natural outgrowth of Jewish wealth in Germany. FDR assured the King of Saudi Arabia that he would never let a Jewish State to be established in Palatine while he was president. Harry Truman had other ideas.

 

[Mario]

Mario the basic premises of you question ... Harry Truman had other ideas.

The key question here is: how FDR would react to an eventual public Nazi blackmail that would basically say: 'US, we have these million people we don't want it here: either you take them to your country or we will annihilate them, it's your choice'. Of course is something unacceptable, but this is not that easy to reject without big remorse and shame, even if this would go against the policies or even the Constitution of the US.

The US might search for solutions like accepting them first but relocating part of them to third countries which traditionally accepted great waves of European immigration like Brazil, Mexico, Argentina or even Canada.

 

[fasquardon]

Let's assume that Nazi Germany would have had the crazy idea to offer the United States the possibility of exchanging population, in the way that the US would receive the Jews, Roma, Slavs etc. etc. the Nazis did not want in their own and conquered territories like if they were new immigrants to be resettled in America, while the US in its side would strip the citizenship of lots of German/Austrian immigrants or other citizens of German origin using the excuse of a potential 'treason' to America, forcing them to 'return' to Germany (thus the loss of population in the Nazi German territories would be more or less compensated).

Of course the idea might be unacceptable at first for the US government, but the pressure of leaving those millions of people in Europe under the high risk of becoming victims of a potential genocide or other atrocities when they could have the chance of saving all of them without having to send American soldiers to die there...would not be that easy to reject at the end. Of course the Nazis would guarantee the Americans that all the German-American people returned to Europe would be well treated (as they were interested in keeping them as a productive workforce and provide them jobs, farms etc.).

Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwww heck no!

A few things to keep in mind:

Forced population movements always require mass murder. (People REALLY don't like giving up their homes meaning violence must be used to expel them and depression, grief, trauma and physical abuse, starvation and neglect kill many on the move.) The level of population exchange you are talking about would BE a genocide, just a different sort of genocide than OTL.

Further, the US was not terribly friendly to new comers in this period. More friendly than pretty much anywhere else in the world, but by no means the USA of today. Or even of the 1880s before laws restricting European immigration started to become popular. And especially not friendly to the peoples that the Nazis wanted to expel/murder. After WW2, the US was more welcoming to (and accepted more of) German immigrants than Jewish immigrants (though credit where it is due, the US was FAR less anti-Semitic than other countries, nonetheless it took over a decade for homes to be found for all the refugees created by WW2 - a great portion of which were in the new state of Israel). The idea that the US would be more welcoming before the horrors that had happened in Europe were known is not credible. It is dubious that the US would accept tens of millions of Jews and Roma as well as potential Communists from the former Soviet territories as well as the millions of Poles (anti-Polonism was a thing in the US too, and Poles were still caricatured as superstitious Catholic drunkards, at least until the war-time propaganda of "plucky little Poland" transformed attitudes, but the US you posit doesn't seem like the sort of government that would be talking up "plucky" Poland).

The US wasn't even willing to accept all the people who tried to flee Europe before the war in OTL. And even if the US were much more welcoming, the logistical challenge here would be utterly staggering. Removing millions of German-Americans, then accepting tens of millions of refugees - none of whom are going to be in good shape because to the Nazis these people weren't really be human... Destroying Nazi Germany would be far cheaper, far easier and may well be less deadly to those the Nazis are trying to get rid of.

And, you know, those German-Americans were mostly people who were at least second generation. Pillars of their communities. Citizens with the vote and patriotism and the respect of their neighbours. Also, they were white and often Protestant. There are German-American families in the US who have lived in the US since before the revolution. It seems unlikely that any plausible US regime would expel these people to Nazi Germany. The first generation German immigrants in the US on the eve of WW2 were generally Jews or left-wingers. And thus perhaps more disposable to a US regime, but hardly the sorts who'd WANT to return to Germany.

It would be far easier for the US to sit back and do nothing as Germany murdered most of Europe's population. After all, nobody much cared about Nazi atrocities in the US during WW2. Why would they care if they were willing to sit back, let the Nazis have their empire and destroy all the evidence which made people care after the war?

fasquardon

 

[RMcD94]

Évian Conference - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

No one wanted Jews even when Hitler made it clear his plans and deprivation of their rights

I can only hope and expect that the other world, which has such deep sympathy for these criminals [Jews], will at least be generous enough to convert this sympathy into practical aid. We, on our part, are ready to put all these criminals at the disposal of these countries, for all I care, even on luxury ships.

 

[Mario]

Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwww heck no!

A few things to keep in mind:

Forced population movements always require mass murder. (People REALLY don't like giving up their homes meaning violence must be used to expel them and depression, grief, trauma and physical abuse, starvation and neglect kill many on the move.) The level of population exchange you are talking about would BE a genocide, just a different sort of genocide than OTL.

That's not true:

Population exchange between Greece and Turkey - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

.

 

[fasquardon]

That's not true:

Did you even read the source you quote?

The most often given figure for Ottoman Greeks killed from 1914 to 1923 ranges from 300,000-900,000. For the whole of the period between 1914 and 1922 and for the whole of Anatolia, there are academic estimates of death toll ranging from 289,000 to 750,000. The figure of 750,000 is suggested by political scientist Adam Jones.[9] Scholar Rudolph Rummel compiled various figures from several studies to estimate lower and higher bounds for the death toll between 1914 and 1923. He estimates that 384,000 Greeks were exterminated from 1914 to 1918, and 264,000 from 1920 to 1922. The total number reaching 648,000.Rummel, R.J. "Statistics Of Turkey's Democide Estimates, Calculations, And Sources". University of Hawai'i. Retrieved 15 April 2015. Table 5.1B.Hinton, Alexander Laban; Pointe, Thomas La; Irvin-Erickson, Douglas (2013). Hidden Genocides: Power, Knowledge, Memory. Rutgers University Press. p. 180. ISBN 9780813561646. The foremost expert on genocide statistics, Rudolph Rummel, has estimated that from 1914 to 1918 the Ottomans exterminated up to 384,000, Greeks, while from 1920 to 1922 another 264,000 Greeks were killed by the Nationalists. Historian Constantine G Hatzidimitriou writes that "loss of life among Anatolian Greeks during the WWI period and its aftermath was approximately 735,370".[10]

fasquardon

 

[RMcD94]

Did you even read the source you quote?



fasquardon

Those genocides occured before the agreement to move populations. How many Greeks or Turks were slain in 1923? Of course population transfer is still a form of ethnic cleansing but to suggest that after an agreement to exchange populations was made that both governments decided to keep killing people is just completely wrong.

You can also look at the internal population transfers of the Soviets. People died absolutely but compare that to the Assyrians who basically were wiped out